[Imap-protocol] Re: IMAP capability for maximum APPEND message size?

["Dave Cridland" <dave@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu Nov 24 00:08:09 2005, Mark Crispin wrote:
> Currently, the only message size limit in IMAP is 4294967295 (2^32 
> - 1) due to IMAP's use of unsigned 32-bit integers.  Supporting 
> that size is troublesome due to +1 overflow problems.  Many 
> implementations have much smaller limits, such as both for 
> administrative and technical reasons (many filesystems encounter 
> problems after 2^31 - 1).
>
> Rather than have this be a secret, I propose a capability called 
> MAXAPPENDSIZE=nnn, where nnn is the size.
I have the strange suspicion that if anyone else had suggested this, 
you'd have personally shot the proposal down by pointing out that 
maximum message size depends on the mailbox driver and/or the 
filesystem the data resides on, rather than the server as a whole, 
and thus it needs to be a per-mailbox capability. Since you're 
proposing this, it befalls me to shoot it down instead. :-)

Currently, there's an ever-growing list of these per-mailbox 
capabilities, generally handled by adding gumph (untagged OK with a 
response-code) to SELECT, meaning that a client has to SELECT the 
mailbox before it knows of certain capabilities - I've never liked 
this much. I'd prefer to add these as either a new mechanism within 
the protocol (that is, a new command, or LIST-EXTENDED extended data 
item), or by extending some other item (such as STATUS, or 
ANNOTATEMORE). Other examples are CONDSTORE, ANNOTATE, etc.

I'm not interested in command line length at all, perhaps because I 
would hate to add that code to Polymer. (Although Polymer does, of 
course, use set-syntax, and UID ranges are extended over non-existent 
UIDs in order to reduce the size).

Dave.
--
          You see things; and you say "Why?"
  But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?"
   - George Bernard Shaw
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